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Thursday, August 14, 2008

表現 Break: 夏風邪は馬鹿が引く

なつ かぜ は ばか が ひくnatsu kaze wa baka ga hiku

Short and sweet post today. Know anybody with a cold or do you have one yourself?

I got a little bit sick and started to hear this one from close friends. Make sure you use it with people who know that you're only teasing, because here's what it means:

Definition:誤解から、一般に、夏風邪を引く者は愚か者であるということ。Translation:Literal - Idiots catch cold in the summer1. Only a fool...

On a short cultural note, I thought I'd bring up a point that I will argue endlessly with Japanese people. I'm curious to know what all y'all think.

How much of a factor does temperature play in catching a cold?

Are you more likely to catch cold if the air conditioner is on?

Do you believe it's possible to get sick BECAUSE of air conditioning?

I always believed that colds are caused by germs, and nothing else. While cold temperatures might lower your body's resistance and make it easier to catch a cold, I refuse to believe that you're going to get sick just because the air conditioner is running. I can also understand that Japanese air conditioning systems dry the air out, which can cause your lungs, throat, and nasal cavity to get all 風邪気味.

However, the Japanese belief that air conditioning is a direct cause of sickness is a little bit too close to the Korean belief in fan death...

5 comments:

1. I never thought it was a big factor, though I readily accept that colds go around more in the winter. I'm even one of those idiots who get sick in the summer.

2. No.

3. NO.

That fan death thing reminds me of my homestay in Okinawa in the dead of summer. It was insanely hot, and the fan they gave me had a timer on it that was difficult to bypass to make it just run all night. But my host family kept sneaking into my room in the night and taking my fan because they thought it would make me sick to sleep with it on. One day when I had a bad headache from heat and general exhaustion, my host sister suggested, "Because you've been sleeping with the fan on?"

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